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China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has ordered three of the country's well-known Internet firms to rectify alleged violations of user privacy.

The state agency invited executives from Baidu, a Chinese search engine giant, Alipay, a third-party online payment platform, and popular news aggregation app Toutiao.com for talks regarding the issue on Thursday.

All three companies have come under attack from the online community after a flood of complaints concerning the intentional blurring of rules and intentions when it comes to collecting personal information belonging to users.

MIIT ordered them to stop such unlawful behaviour and said that they would face serious punishment if these breaches continue, China News Service reports.

A special technical department under MIIT's remit is to track and monitor the actions taken by apps related to all three, in order to determine whether or not they have clearly informed users about how and why their information is collected.

During the discussion, Baidu, Alipay and Toutiao.com all pledged to enhance internal management and improve product design in a bid to protect users' privacy.

Chi Dehua
has been a staff editor at GBTIMES since 2013. She covers foreign affairs, business and culture.